Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Action Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #1! ACTION COMICS! ACTION, BABY! We’re talking fist fights. We’re talking half nelsons. We’re talking high-speed police chases. We’re talking AK-47s. We’re talking grand theft auto, baby. We’re talking oiled chests. We’re talking ninja heists.

I don’t know what to expect at all with Action Comics! I wasn’t even really expecting to start reading this series anytime soon, I thought I was gonna binge on Batman stuff! When jumping into DC Comics I figured “Hey, they literally rebooted everything from the start! What a perfect place to jump in and go through an entire run!”, not realizing that basically every single one of the 52 different series in the reboot crosses over with each other in some way eventually. Whoops! Now, any seasoned comic book aficionado would say “Hey Tom, you dingus, you don’t HAVE to read everything in order before getting to the events”. And I say, fuck you, I’m going to try! I’ll be jumping around the many series a lot on the DC side of things for sure, so be warned. Eventually it will all come together. I hope! If nothing else, you can stick to my personal chronology to at least maintain some semblance of continuity with all this shit.

Anyway, Action Comics! The most famous comic book of all time is Action Comics #1, the introduction of Superman. I’m not reading that Action Comics #1, though, I’m reading THIS Action Comics #1. The Volume 2 version of Action Comics #1. What a rip off! What will I learn? Is this just another glorified Superman comic book with a different name? Oh boy, the excitement!

Action Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #1 [November, 2011]
Written by: Grant Morrison
“Superman Versus the City of Tomorrow”

Yuck, look at Superman’s face on the fucking cover. What an arrogant-looking jerkoff. I have a feeling I’m not going to connect with Superman, mostly because he’s portrayed as flawless and has no weaknesses except some sort of rock from his home planet, right? Also, Jerry Seinfeld really likes Superman and that’s major points off right there anyway.

Two panels in and I’m already laughing because this guy says “Mr. Glenmorgan…I’m teetotal.”, which sounded like straight up Engrish to me until I looked it up and realized that it’s a grammatically correct sentence. But it reminded me of “Bart, get out, I’m piss.” and you shouldn’t look that up at all. Anyway, these two guys are some sort of pieces-of-shit businessmen and Superman pops in all angry about the businessmen. There’s guys with guns too. Superman throws them all around the room, but we don’t even see it! Where’s the Action in my Comics?!

Mr. Teetotal tells the cops who arrive on the scene that a “madman” came “out of nowhere” with “a red parachute” and took “Mr.” Glenmorgan. They go into the next room and Superman is standing there on the edge of a balcony about 50 floors off the ground hosting Glenmorgan above his head with one arm, which is an arrogant-jerkoff thing to do!

Check out Glenmorgan’s eyes rolling in the back of his head in ecstasy. He loves this shit. Really gets off on it.

Glenmorgan is rabid with rage! The police are supposed to stop Superman NOW! Meanwhile, “Superman” (I’m beginning to think this cat isn’t actually Superman, his eyes keep glowing ominously in the shadows) is like “fuck you Glenmorgan you pussy” and jumps off the roof, plummets to the ground, and lands on his feet while still holding him. After this, Glenmorgan has a few choice words for Superman, such as “Dhh” or “Uh… Guh…”, and then decides to give a full confession right then and there about his shady business dealings, corner cutting, and other various tomfooleries. Pffft.

Once the threat has been eliminated Superman starts being a jerk to the police, taunting them while smiling vaguely, which is kind of cool actually. The police start shooting at him and calling in reinforcements, but even I know that it’s futile. This is a Super-type Man, you nimrods! He’s going to live forever until he’s a gibbering trillion-year-old idiot floating around the hazy remnants of complete entropy.

Meanwhile, in some army command center, we see Lex Luthor sipping from a can of pop while General Lane (Lois Lane’s dad?) is trying to figure out how they can eliminate this big scary “Super” “Man”. The army is paying Luthor to bring them Superman by 8pm. Luthor seems confident.

It’s the very next panel where I realize that Superman seems to be wearing denim jeans as part of his superhero outfit! Gross! It seems Luthor has arranged for a wrecking ball to start demolishing a building with people in it, which is exactly the kind of tree-huggin’ humanitarian bullshit that Superman would fall for. He successfully stops the wrecking ball in its path and launches it against another wall, creating an opening for the people to escape through. ACTION!

GNUHH! Here comes the Admiral of the Denim Brigade! Got a wallet chain to go with those JNCOs?

But wait! There are tanks waiting outside the building and one of them shoots a net right at Superman, which he is apparently no match for whatsoever for exactly one panel. Superman then grabs the wrecking ball chain and swings it into one of the tanks. It’s at this point that the army guys decide to throw in the towel; this denim-clad beast must be from another planet or something! Reinforcement helicopters arrive, but Superman decides to fucking fly away easily. Bye!

Superman lands on his apartment building, puts on a large and smelly-looking orange shirt, dons some Harry Potter nerd glasses, rumples his hair, and now he’s in a perfect disguise! Clark Kent! His cross-eyed landlady is concerned because ol’ Clarky looks a little mussed up! Hahaha, that’s ok Ms. *squints* Nyxly? Yuck. Anyway, ol’ Clarky has had it worse growing up on his Smallville farm! Heh heh ha! They have a friendly chat about how wonderful Superman is as Ms. Nyxyxyx demands her rent money from Kent. She tells him he had visitors. He is perplexed. Probably because Superman is a little bit dumb, right? Isn’t he some sort of dumb guy? Am I remembering that right?

Clark Kent calls some little bowlhead kid named Jimmy Olsen, who is with Lois Lane at a subway station. They both look a little cross-eyed too! Clark tells Jimmy not to get on the train because of reasons. Lois Lane is like “nuh uh, that guy works for the OTHER newspaper and I ain’t listening, girlfriend”. This scene is hard to follow, ugh. A lot of dialogue is happening one-sided from the reader’s point of view and I have too much attention deficit disorder to hey look a penny.

Where was I? It seems Lois Lane boarded a train anyway and this is bad. The train goes faster and there’s some bad guy named Grundig involved who may have made a shady business deal with that Glenmorgan guy. Clark Kent, somewhere along the way, turns into Superman again and chases the train, runs ahead of it, and attempts to stop it by pushing against the driver’s cabin. Meanwhile, some guy dressed like a 1920’s gangster tells Lois and Jimmy to “SAY IT TO THE GUNS!” I’m sure they try hard not to start snickering at this. He’s even wearing a bandit mask! Cute. Superman is still trying to stop the train while he’s bleeding out the ears! ACTION! The train somehow derails, crashes through like forty buildings, and stops? And everyone’s ok probably.

Left one is Martha! Right one is Daisy! A couple o’ ladies for ya! They’s all dolled up and ready ta kiss! With a bullet thru da brainpan!

Back at Army HQ, General Lane is mad as the dickens because Lois was on that train and Lex Luthor fucking knew that! Rawr! As Lex Luthor gets yelled at he starts talking about snakes and toads and compares Superman to a parasite and Earth to a host. He points out that Superman is pinned against the outside of the Daily Planet building by the train, declares that he made good on his promise to bring Superman to General Lane by 8pm, and walks the hell on out of there smugly. Lane just kind of stares, realizing that Luthor has a point.

Final Thoughts

Mixed feelings! A lot of this was stupid, black-and-white good guy-bad guy shit, but some of it was more interesting than I either expected OR stubbornly pretended wasn’t! It felt kind of long, though. I like my ACTION with less action!

HOWEVER, if I’m supposed to hate Lex Luthor then it didn’t work, because he was the best part of the issue. He never got emotional, nervous, and he’s got a big bald head!

Superman seems like he’s not entirely flawless here! He says “ow”, among other things. Bleeding ears. I’m not sure what to make of that yet. I’m also wondering if Action Comics is going to follow Superman entirely or if it’s going to branch off into different stories. Why have a separate Superman series if Action Comics is going to follow Superman??

Ignorance abounds on my end! Will Tom learn a thing or two? See you in Action Comics, Volume 2, Issue #2, you dorkbuckets!